Many web sites today use the Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security (SSL) protocols to achieve end-to-end secure communications, particularly in the areas of electronic commerce and financial services. The SSL protocol is described in Netscape Communications Corp., Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) version 3, (November 1996). The TLS protocol is derived from SSL, and is described in Dierks, T., and Allen, C., “The TLS Protocol Version 1.0,” RFC 2246 (January 1999), available at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). As used throughout this application, including the claims, SSL refers to SSL, TLS, and all secure communications protocols derived therefrom. A widely used SSL-enable protocol today is the Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) encapsulated in an SSL connection, commonly known as HTTPS. The HTTP protocol is described in “Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) version 1.0, RFC 1945 (May 1996)” and “Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) version 1.1, RFC 2616 (June 1999)”. The SSL protocol's authentication mechanism typically requires web servers to perform computationally expensive mathematical operations, the effects of which are fewer requests serviced per unit time and higher latency in processing individual requests.
The SSL protocol provides several methods to authenticate both parties to an SSL connection, the most common of which is the use of Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) authentication pas part of a public key infrastructure (PKI). This is described in RSA Cryptography Standard, PKCS #1 Version 2.0 (Nov. 1, 1993), available from RSA's website. In common usage, web servers will authenticate themselves to clients, but not vice-versa. As part of this procedure, the authenticating party performs a computationally expensive RSA “signing” operation in a full SSL handshake. This calculation is very time consuming and comprises the single largest bottleneck in short-lived SSL connections.